WORLD SERIES: NOTEBOOK

WORLD SERIES: NOTEBOOK; Diamondbacks Spread Cheer

By Rafael Hermoso

Published: October 30, 2001

A group of 40 from the Diamondbacks' organization, including about 15 players, made a two-hour trip yesterday to the World Trade Center site, visiting police officers, firefighters and rescue workers, signing construction helmets, police caps and firefighters' hats.

Curt Schilling thanked officers for their work in a speech at 1 Police Plaza and told them that nothing baseball players do could compare to their work.

Mike Swanson, Arizona's director of public relations, said that the normally loquacious Schilling had trouble finding the words to describe his feelings. ''He wasn't long,'' Swanson said of Schilling. ''He talked for a minute, and you could see the tears in our guys' eyes and the tears in their eyes.''

Workers seemed in awe that Randy Johnson was visiting them less than 24 hours after throwing a three-hit shutout in Phoenix in Game 2, and they congratulated him, Swanson said. One police officer wearing a Yankees cap asked for a photograph with Johnson, and Johnson told him he had to turn the cap around. The officer complied.

''I think it was a true break from what they're doing,'' Johnson said.

''The reason I went down there was not to see the rubble,'' Mark Grace said. ''The reason I went down there was to visit the firemen and policemen and construction workers, the real role models. It makes you proud.''

Schilling, Johnson, Grace and Luis Gonzalez asked Swanson to make arrangements to visit the site after Arizona won the pennant, before the Yankees had beaten Seattle in the American League Championship Series.

''We won the pennant and they were thinking ground zero before the Yankees had even won,'' Swanson said. Rafael Hermoso